"Some fans came up to me and asked, 'Will you play a song for us?' They saw my guitar sitting there. So I got my band members to bust out their guitars, too, and we just played a concert at the terminal. It's so much fun doing stuff like that."

"This award was for Breakthrough Video of the Year for my song 'Tim McGraw.' I wasn't going to prom that year, so I decided to turn the CMT Awards into my prom. I was so emotional when I won that award, because it's fan-voted."

"My mom has never said to me, 'Taylor, you're gonna be famous someday.' There are so many moms who tell their kids that. But my mom has always been practical. She didn't know whether I would succeed. She'd say, 'If you want a chance at this, you've got to work really, really hard.'"

"I had a rain machine on stage. I was absolutely just overjoyed in that shot. A lot of people asked me why I looked so surprised at the end of the performance. And it's because I looked down in the front row and saw George Strait giving me a standing ovation. I just couldn't believe it."

2008: Performing the National Anthem at the World Series, Philadelphia

"I was so excited, because my home team, the Phillies, won the World Series. I'd always dreamed of singing the anthem at that baseball stadium. I used to sing the anthem for their minor-league team, the Redding Phillies, when I was ten."

"At photo shoots, they blow wind at you all the time. It irritates my eyes, and I don't like it. But the photographer put the wind on, like, hurricane mode. That's how we got that picture. It was the last shot of the day."

"This is one of my favorite dresses I've ever worn to an awards show. It's by Kaufman Franco, and it weighed about 25 pounds. It was made of these giant gold rocks sewn together. Every once in a while, a big chunk would fall off. My dad trailed after me, laughing and picking up each piece, going, 'eBay.' "